24 Is Not a Joke: The Secret Life of Brazil’s Most Stigmatized Number

A Number That Whispers

In Brazil, no number carries as much whispered meaning as 24. It echoes in schoolyards, locker rooms, and carnival sambas. It’s the butt of the joke, the punchline that never changes: "24 é veado" — "24 is gay."

The phrase is part of everyday slang, but it originates in an unlikely place: Jogo do Bicho, Brazil’s clandestine animal lottery that has shaped everything from urban violence to football squad numbers. In the game, each animal corresponds to a group of four numbers. The 24th animal? The deer — veado — which, over the 20th century, became a slang term for effeminate or gay men.

Today, the stigma lives on. Male footballers historically refused to wear jersey number 24. Comedians leaned on it as an easy stereotype. Children learned early to avoid the number, or weaponize it against others. But beneath the homophobia lies a stranger, older code: a superstitious web of meanings, myths, and street-level resistance, shaped by one of the most quietly influential institutions in Brazil’s modern history.

This is the story of Jogo do Bicho. And of a number that became a mirror.

The Game They Couldn't Kill

Jogo do Bicho was born in 1892, in a zoo. The Baron of Drummond, an idealist and entrepreneur, had just opened Brazil’s first public zoological garden in the newly developed neighborhood of Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro. Visitors received tickets with pictures of animals. At the end of each day, one animal was drawn. If your ticket matched, you won a cash prize.

The game soon slipped the confines of the zoo and spread across Rio's street corners, bars, and bodegas. Each of the 25 animals corresponded to a set of four numbers, covering 00 to 99:

Banned in 1895 but never extinguished, the game became a cultural fixture. By the 20th century, Jogo do Bicho had grown into a multi-billion real enterprise controlled by illegal gambling bosses known as bicheiros. They bankrolled samba schools, football clubs, and neighborhoods. The state criminalized it, but the people kept playing.

From Deer to Slur

In Portuguese, veado means deer. But it also became one of the most commonly used slurs for gay men. How that shift happened is murky, but Jogo do Bicho played a key role in embedding it.

By mid-century, kids were already taunting each other with "Ele é o 24". Number 24 became synonymous with ridicule. Masculinity was policed with numbers.

In football, the taboo became institutional. For decades, male teams avoided assigning number 24 altogether. Even today, it remains controversial: in 2020, several players wore it in solidarity after the death of Kobe Bryant, challenging the stigma. Others, like Fluminense’s Nino, embraced it as an act of quiet resistance.

In funk music, street comedy, and novelas, "24" appears again and again — sometimes reclaimed, sometimes ridiculed. In queer art circles, the number has been reframed as a badge of survival. In zines and graffiti, 24 é orgulho now answers back.

Blood on the Ledger

The bicho empire was anything but symbolic. In the 1970s and 80s, Rio's gambling bosses divided the city into territories. Violence followed. Police were bribed. Judges were bought. Hitmen were hired.

One of the most chilling links between Jogo do Bicho and institutional corruption emerged in 2018, when councilwoman Marielle Franco was assassinated in downtown Rio. Ronnie Lessa, the ex-BOPE officer arrested for her murder, was later revealed to have worked as a hitman for bicho-linked mafias. Her killing was a political crime with deep roots in the intersection of state violence, paramilitarism, and illegal gambling empires.

In 1993, a breakthrough: 14 top bicheiros were convicted by Judge Denise Frossard. Among them, José Caruzzo Escafura — Piruinha — who had controlled entire zones of Rio since the 1950s. He proudly called himself the only banker who never hid his trade.

He died in 2025, aged 94, amid samba songs and floral wreaths from the city’s elite. To some, he was a criminal. To others, a benefactor. His legacy, like the game itself, lives in contradiction.

The Digital Threat

Today, Jogo do Bicho is in decline. Not because the state won, but because the internet did.

Since 2018, online gambling apps like Tigrinho have exploded across Brazil. Legal, unregulated, and addictive, they now move over R$18 billion monthly. Younger players prefer slots and soccer odds. The bicho slips into nostalgia.

Even the bicheiros have gone digital, laundering their profits through legal betting sites. The cultural code is dissolving into the algorithm. And yet, in old neighborhoods, the animal numbers still flicker in dreams, scrawled on walls, folded into bills.

24 Today

And what of 24? Still avoided by some, reclaimed by others.
In 2024, queer collectives in São Paulo staged a public performance titled Vinte e Quatro: Não Somos Seu Bicho, blending poetry, funk, and bicho symbolism. In Vila Isabel, a mural appeared: 24 é Resistência.

Once used to shame, the number is now a site of subversion. A secret language unspooling itself. A number that used to whisper. Now learning how to shout.